


In Peace

by Lirazel



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-26
Updated: 2009-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In peace there's nothing so becomes a man / As modest stillness and humility...</i>  Buffy, Spike, and five minutes of peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Peace

Buffy sighs and rolls her head, stretching her neck. Finally a moment to catch her breath in between catastrophes. Maybe this time she'll have five whole minutes in which she isn't running from a hellgod or watching her Watcher get skewered like a kebob or fighting off extras from a period war movie or interrogating generals. She's never thought her life could get any more surreal than it already was, but apparently she was wrong. This…this is so strange that it seems like more of a dream than anything she's ever experienced.

But she won't let herself think about that now, not when the thought is so exhausting. Instead, she squeezes Giles's hand in hers, then pushes away from the counter he's lying on to scan the room.

As always, it's Dawn she searches for first. If she isn't aware of exactly where Dawn is at any given moment, she feels panic bubble up, threatening to suffocate her, a kind of panic that was unfamiliar to her before she found her mother's body lying on that couch. For a moment, she feels that terror as she catalogues all the others—Anya, rummaging through her backpack; Willow, soothing Tara in the corner; Xander, in the other room, guarding the soldier they captured and tied to a pole till they can interrogate him when he wakes up.

But she doesn't see Dawn at all. She's about to open her mouth, cry out and shatter this quiet that masquerades as peace, but then she catches a glimpse of Dawn's shining hair tucked in between a toppled-over shelf and the wall, surrounded on three sides by sturdy wood. Her little sister is curled up beside Spike, her head resting on his shoulder as he sits with his back to the wall. As Buffy watches, Dawn's eyes sink shut and she sighs, slipping into sleep. Spike lifts his arm as though he's going to slip it around Dawn's shoulder, then seems to think better of it, shakes his head, and lets his arm drop.

Buffy walks towards them slowly, feeling ancient and so weary that her bones ache with it. At this point, she isn't sure how she's standing; adrenaline's been the only thing that's kept her from collapsing all day, and honestly, she thinks this moment of relative peace—if any moment can be peaceful with Tara's whimpers and Giles's groans filling the room, with the background music of robed guys trying to chant down the barrier that's keeping the Renaissance Faire from slaughtering her sister—might be more dangerous than one more disaster. If she stops now—stops running, stops fighting, stops _goinggoinggoing_ so fast she can't even pause to think about what it is they're actually facing—if she stops all that, she suspects she won't ever start again.

Still, she slides to the floor beside her sister and takes Dawn's hand in hers. Dawnie's nails are decorated with the chipped remnants of the nail polish she swiped from Buffy's purse last week and she's snoring softly. How could anyone want to hurt her?

"Really wish you'd let me nick that Porsche, Slayer. We coulda been all the way to Mexico by now. That thing had _real_ horsepower."

Just when she thought that the rigidity in her shoulders couldn't get any more tense…. "Spike. Don't start. I don't have the energy to deal with this right now." She never knew that her voice could sound both sharp and weary at the same time.

He ducks his head, managing to look abashed. It's not a look she likes on him, especially now. Right now, she doesn't want to deal with the man—_vampire_. _Vampire, vampire, vampire_, she reminds herself—who thinks he's in love with her. She wants him to be the warrior who stood up to a hellgod. Trouble is, she's not so sure they're that far apart anymore.

"Sorry, Slayer. Didn't mean to—" He stops abruptly, then tries again. "Just don't want anything happening to the Bit." He's got a lock of Dawn's hair between his fingers, and he's fiddling with it. She can see the bloodstained bandages wrapped tight around his hands, the blood nearly black in the half-light. She winces as she remembers the way he grabbed onto that sword and didn't let go, the bellow she could hear even on the roof when the soldier finally wrenched it free.

"How bad are they?" she asks, jerking her head towards his hands, knowing she doesn't sound very concerned but too tired to muster up the energy to actually care.

He shrugs, but his eyes are intense as he holds her gaze. "Nothing a pint of blood won't knit back together."

Uncomfortable with the force of his gaze, she shifts on the cold concrete of the floor, pulls her knees up to her chin, and then leans her cheek against them. Like this, she can watch Dawn without the effort it takes to turn her head. She's half-convinced that if she looks away from her for even a second, her sister will disappear before her eyes.

"She spilled hot chocolate on my homecoming dress."

"What's that, love?"

Her eyes flicker over to Spike, who's looking at her in confusion. "Dawn," she clarifies, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb her sleeping sister. "Freshman year. I found the perfect dress—and trust me, I'd searched every store in L.A. that was even slightly in my price range, so when I say, 'perfect,' I mean it."

"Yeah? What color was it?"

"Green. This pale kind of seafoam color. And a floaty skirt, and a sweetheart neckline. I had this awesome pair of strappy silver heels, and my friend Jennifer's big sister was going to do my hair. She was in cosmetology school, and we thought she was the coolest person ever."

"Bet you were a picture." Spike's smiling this weird kind of smile, one that makes her profoundly uncomfortable. It's so…_fond_, like he's picturing her in it, little freshman Buffy, before her whole life turned upside down. And it's not a leer, not sexual at all, which makes her even _more_ uneasy. If it was that, she'd know how to deal. But affection for a little Buffy?

She feels the blush creeping into her cheeks and decides to steer the subject away from anything having to do with her looks. "Anyway, two days before homecoming, I went in my closet to try on the dress one more time. And it was there, but it was brown. And…dripping. I—I _shrieked_."

"What happened?"

"It took a lot of screaming from both me and Dawn—and maybe some hair-pulling and slapping—before Mom calmed us down enough to figure it out. Apparently, Dawn had snuck in my room to try it on and took her hot chocolate with her—which she was _not_ supposed to take out of the kitchen, by the way. She spilled it, of course, all over the dress.

"Mom had just finished reading her this book where a girl spills something on her sister's white dress and then dyes the whole thing in tea to cover it. It worked well enough in the book, and…"

"Bite Size here thought cocoa could do the same. Always inventive, is our girl." He laughed. "I reckon she got punished for it."

"Oh, she was in loads of trouble, even if Mom couldn't stop laughing. I mean, that dress was _expensive_, and Dawn hung it up before it was dry, and so the carpet in my closet was all chocolaty. She had to pay for the dress _and_ carpet cleaning out of her allowance. It took months."

"And you, Slayer? What did you wear to your shindig?"

"Nothing." His eyebrows shoot up, and she rolls her eyes. "I didn't get to go. Slayer stuff."

"Ah."

"Except that that's the only part of the story that's true, isn't it? The hot chocolate thing didn't happen, not really. But I just can't wrap my mind around it. That level of detail. Those dozens of journals she kept, covered in words she never wrote. Pictures in the albums, handmade Christmas tree ornaments, baby clothes in the basement. Sometimes I wonder what happened to my favorite Barbie if Dawn wasn't really there to pull the head off. Those monks must really have been all about the me protecting her."

Spike was rolling a cigarette between his fingers now, staring at the white cylinder thoughtfully. "Reckon so."

"But why?" Her voice is a bit too loud, too sharp, and she winces, glancing down at her sister. But Dawn still appears peaceful, snatching a quick nap on a vampire's shoulder. Buffy lowers her voice. "Why make her a fourteen-year-old girl? Why not make her a…six foot seven, three hundred pound expert in Tae Kwon Do, jujutsu, and krav maga?"

Spike tucks the cigarette back into his pocket and, carefully so as not to disturb Dawn, turns his body as much as he can to face Buffy. "Because that's the important part."

"What is?"

"You, Slayer. You, protecting her. They could count on that, because that's the person you are. Someone looking after themselves, no matter how selfish they are…sooner or later they might just get tired. Slip up. Weariness…sometimes that's worse than despair." His eyes go all far away for a moment, and she remembers Xander laughing as he related for the sixteenth time the story of a Hawaiian-shirt-clad Spike trying to fall on a stake. But then his gaze is sharp again, capturing hers. "But you're looking out for someone you love, and anyone who knows the first thing about you knows you won't give up on that. Hell, I'd've offed you long before now if it weren't for that."

She feels tears burning in her eyes, tears she hasn't allowed herself to let fall since….She wipes them away hurriedly. Strange, that he's saying nearly the exact same thing he told her in that alley behind the Bronze months ago—_The only reason you've lasted as long as you have is you've got ties to the world... your mum, brat kid sister, Scoobies._ It sounds different now, the way he phrases it, even the tone of his voice. Not a threat, not a warning. A compliment, maybe. Like he admires her. She opens her mouth. "Spike—"

"Buffy?"

Xander's standing in the doorway, and he finds the time to shoot a glare Spike's direction before he addresses her. "Medieval Man's awake."

And just like that, the deceptive tranquility shatters. No more time for tales of her childhood, for questioning her life, for having conversations about her nature. She's a warrior, and it's time to act like one.

She scrambles to her feet and turns to leave.

"Slayer? You taking little sis with you?"

She spins to face him, still sitting on the floor, his arm tight around Dawn now. When had he put it around her? She can't remember. "Spike, this is an interrogation. It's hardly the sort of thing a fourteen—"

"Well, running from a hellgod's hardly the sort of thing a fourteen-year-old should be involved in either. And yet here she is." Buffy's silent for a moment, her jaw clenched, refusing to answer. Spike tries again. "It's about her. Think she'll want to hear it, don't you? Think she deserves to." He holds her gaze, unrelentingly, like he's daring her to disagree with him.

Finally, she nods, and reaches down to shake her sister away. "Come on, Dawnie."

Slightly disoriented, her sister stumbles to her feet, Spike's strong hand steadying her. Buffy turns again to the doorway, the other two falling into step behind her. As they enter the other room, she hears Spike mutter under his breath, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends…"

Yeah. Once more.


End file.
